Past, present, and future of Post Point

The Post Point facility has been in operation for nearly 45 years, and carries out two essential and related treatment processes, liquids, and solids. In 2009, the City identified in the Comprehensive Sewer Plan a need for additional wastewater capacity at the Post Point Plant.

In 2014, the City completed major upgrades to the liquid treatment process to improve performance, meet current regulations, and increase capacity for the future. As part of that project, future upgrades to the solid’s treatment process were planned. Wastewater solids are currently incinerated (burned) at Post Point, which emits CO2 and other contaminants into the air. Incineration uses equipment installed in the 1970s that is very expensive to maintain and repair, extremely difficult to permit, and burns, rather than recovers resources.

In 2017, planning work was resumed to determine the best way to update the solids treatment process. The City used an evaluation process that looked at several options and measured the environmental, social, financial, and technical benefits of each option. After gathering input from the community on the options and the evaluation, the City has decided to implement a digestion-based solution. Digestion essentially replicates what your stomach does to food, using microbes and heat to break down solids to produce biosolids and biogas. The biosolids will be treated to meet the highest standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency so they can be used to create a soil additive, like a fertilizer, for the community’s us.

Liquid and solid process at Post Point